Fighting Chance(94)

“I’ll say the same thing to you that I said to Dr. Loftus,” Gregor said. “For the moment, keep quiet. All right? Okay. Mark Granby was a very interesting person to find on that security tape, because as part of its attempt to make as much money as possible, he was systematically bribing judges, corrections officers, state evaluating psychologists, and a fair number of other people involved in the process. He was doing this here, and with Martha Handling. Martha Handling was taking money for incarcerating the juveniles that came before her, as often as she possibly could and for as long as she possibly could. And she had been taking it for at least the last few years. And that meant that there were rumors, and there were suspicions—and rumors and suspicions often led to investigations.”

“Was there an investigation?” Russ Donahue asked. “I heard all those rumors, too, but I could never figure out if anything official was happening.”

“Nothing official was happening yet,” Gregor said, “but it was on its way and it was inevitable. I heard the same rumors, some of them from people in the Bureau, and once it gets there, something’s going to follow. So Martha Handling was getting a little squiffy. Dr. Loftus here told me that she had a tendency, when she was involved in something she could get into trouble for, to rat out early and thus get the benefit of being the person with the most to trade for favorable treatment.”

“It wasn’t just favorable treatment,” Janice Loftus said. “She got off scot free of everything and hailed as a hero half the time.”

“Possibly,” Gregor said, “but that doesn’t really matter, in a way, because for whatever reason she was thinking of turning herself in, she was thinking of turning herself in. Mark Granby told me that himself when I talked to him. And if Martha Handling turned herself in, and if she talked her head off when she turned herself in, then Mark Granby was going to go to jail for a long time. And that makes him, as you can see, our prime suspect when it comes to motive.”

“It doesn’t explain what the motive for Petrak was supposed to be,” Sophie said. “What was the motive for Petrak supposed to be?”

“In the beginning,” Gregor said, “the idea was that Petrak, knowing that Judge Handling was the one most likely to give Stefan a long sentence, was looking to get Martha Handling out of the way so that Stefan’s case would be moved to another judge.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sophie said.

“Maybe,” Gregor said, “but that was the thinking. Ever since the death of Mikel Dekanian, the thinking has been that Petrak may be something of a sociopath.”

“That’s just persecution of immigrants,” Janice Loftus said furiously. “That’s exactly the kind of thing you people would think up to say.”

“And that’s possibly true, too,” Gregor said, “but it’s largely beside the point. We don’t know that Mark Granby came down the corridor toward Martha Handling’s chambers, but we do know he could have, and since he could have, we’re going to put him on the list. Dr. Loftus here is also on the list, because Dr. Loftus knew Martha Handling for many years, and there’s always the possibility that there is something in their past that hasn’t come to light yet.”

“Ridiculous,” Janice said.

“I told you to be quiet,” Gregor said. “If you’ll all follow me, we’ll get on to the next part.”

Gregor went off down the hall, and the crowd followed him. It was almost all of the crowd, and not just the people whom he had brought along himself.

He stopped near the bathrooms and pointed back at the security camera on the ceiling. “That’s the last functioning camera,” he said. “It points in the other direction, so it can see people going toward the bathrooms, but it can’t tell us who went into the bathrooms, or who went past them and into the farther corridors. Or, for that matter, who went into the bathrooms and who then came out and went down the other corridors toward Martha Handling’s chambers. But there are some things that must have happened by necessity. The murderer must have been the first person to go down the corridors to Martha Handling’s chambers.”

“The first person to go down to Martha Handling’s chambers was Father Kasparian here,” Ray Berle said.

Gregor shook his head. “No. Father Tibor was the first one to come down the corridor to the bathrooms, but he did enter the bathrooms. All the other people came afterwards, but we don’t know who went into the bathrooms and for how long. So Father Tibor goes into the bathroom, and when he comes out, he sees one of our suspects going off down the corridor in the other direction from the court, and he follows. You should follow.”